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Detailed plans to tackle homelessness in Toronto and other Canadian cities are having little impact on reducing the problem, according a new report.

What is worse, the crisis is growing among some groups such as families, youth and seniors, says the report being released Monday to mark World Homelessness Day.

“Municipalities are trying to do the best they can. But what our study showed, is the resources they have are inadequate to make a significant dent in the problem,” said Dr. Stephen Hwang, director of the Centre for Urban Health Solutions at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

“It’s very clear the ability to create affordable housing or create enough rent supplements or supports to solve the problem of chronic homelessness is beyond the capacity of any city,” added Hwang, head of the Research Alliance for Canadian Homelessness, which produced the report.

The report, “Ending Homelessness in Canada,” examined 10-year housing and homelessness plans in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa and found that local plans help to identify community needs and target public investment. But without federal funding and a co-ordinated strategy with provincial governments, cities are powerless to make meaningful change, the report concludes.

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“We need a strategic federal response that addresses the underlying structural causes of poverty and homelessness, that is co-ordinated with the provinces and which dedicates, new long-term funding at the levels required to end homelessness in Canada,” Hwang said.

Roughly 235,000 Canadians become homeless every year, with 35,000 sleeping in shelters and on the streets on any given night. That doesn’t include those without homes who are staying with friends or relatives temporarily, the report notes.

In Toronto, more than 5,000 people were sleeping outside and in emergency shelters during a 2013 survey. The next count is scheduled for 2017.

One of the fastest growing groups of homeless people in Toronto is older adults. About 29 per cent are over age 50, more than double the proportion who were homeless four years ago, according to city statistics.

Deep shows off some of his art at Good Shepherd Ministries. (Steve Russell/Toronto Star)

One of those men is David Allan Deep, 51, who said in an interview that he grew up on the streets and started drinking around the age of 8.

“I was an alcoholic by the time I was 12 years old,” he said.

Deep said he had a good life with his partner and helped raise their kids, but after she died about five years ago, things started going downhill again. He said he’s been clean for three months, and staying at the Good Shepherd shelter in Toronto off and on for about three years.

Hwang, who runs a weekly medical clinic at another Toronto shelter, Seaton House, said the issue of older homeless people is “a significant concern that has a lot of implications for the health care system.”

“It is no longer an extraordinary day when I meet an 80-year-old homeless person,” Hwang said.

In 2014, more than 91,000 Toronto households were waiting for affordable housing, up from about 76,000 five years earlier, the report says. Last month that number jumped to more than 95,000 households.

More than 5,000 people in Toronto are homeless on any given night. About 29 per cent of them are over age 50, the fastest growing group of homeless in the city. (City of Toronto)

While some affordable housing is being built across Canada, many cities are losing almost as many units in the private rental market to redevelopment. Very little of it is affordable to the poorest households because Ottawa stopped funding new rent-geared-to-income housing in 1993, the report adds.

Toronto Mayor John Tory has called the city’s affordable housing crisis an “issue for a generation.”

At a municipal housing summit in Toronto last month, Tory and other big city mayors urged Ottawa to commit $12.6 billion of the available $20 billion in federal “social” infrastructure funding to cities for housing.

Public consultations on a national housing strategy end Oct. 21 with the government expected to release a report in November on Canadians’ views. Federal Families, Children and Social Development Minister Jean-Yves Duclos has said he expects to release a plan by the end of the year.

Hwang, who co-led a national study on “housing first” strategies to tackle chronic homelessness, said providing homes for people on the street who are often struggling with mental health and addiction problems is more successful and cost-effective that a “treatment first” approach.

But he said federal housing funding must be broader in scope.

“If it is all focused on chronically homeless individuals, it might result in fewer resources being available to people who are not chronically homeless and that includes women and youth and families,” he said.

In addition to a national strategy and long-term federal-provincial funding, the report recommends increases to the minimum wage and welfare rates as well as tax incentives to encourage the private sector to build more affordable housing.

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